Look at all the Misspelled Street Names in San Francisco!
A couple weeks ago I was lying in bed watching an episode of the final season of Treme. Part of my morning ritual is to watch an hour of internet TV before I commute (trudge over) to my desk to begin work. Like most of us, my machines are my masters, and while watching things go down in the Crescent City on my computer I was also scrolling through Instagram on my phone. That’s when I came across this photo that Nicole Schwieterman took (you know Nicole from designing my favorite shirt ever):
By liking and commenting on the above photo I came to find out that street names are misspelled in sidewalks all over The City! Nicole told me that she’d been photographing them for awhile (but her hard drive crashed with most of the pics on it). Then Tim Gatto commented that Billy from Polaroid SF had a lot of them, and Billy chimed into the conversation saying that, not only did he have a ton of them, he had “the money shot of a city worker laying down a misspelling in wet cement”. Just look at this amazing shot!:
Awesome right? Of course I wanted to know how many of these there were, where they existed, etc. To which Billy replied:
I have no clue how many there are. This city changes so quickly that I’m sure some of my older ones are already gone and that new ones are created daily. I like the idea of the chain reaction. It seems everyone knows where to find them. Once people starting noticing I collected them, they’d let me know about ones they’d seen or take pictures themselves and use my hashtag.
The hashtag Billy is talking about it #sfmisspelledstreets. Click it because it’s rad.
Then Billy sent the rest of these photos and captions:
This was the very first one I noticed (Russian Hill)
Then my friend @carlek told me about this one in Nob Hill. I made a special trip out to find it. Double points for 2 typos.
This one is right by my work and I must have stepped over it a hundred times without noticing
This Chinatown one is very confusing. I count 3 upside-down letters.
This one on Geary, a block up from Tommy’s Joynt, made my day
I was literally talking about how I really wanted to find a misspelled street when I came across this beauty in Potrero Hill.
Dubooe? Or Duboce very poorly executed
And finally, if that weren’t enough Billy hipped me to throgers, who’s collection of misspelled street name photos makes everyone else’s look tiny. I love this shit!
Have you seen any of these? Tell us all about them below!
